


A Little External Perspective

by SaltCore



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fareeha "Real Talk Tuesday" Amari, Human Trash Fire Hanzo Shimada, Justice Siblings, Light Angst, M/M, in-laws who tolerate each other very much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: Hanzo's thinking himself into knots. Fareeha doesn't put up with it.





	A Little External Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a little drabble for bluandorange's prompt "Fareeha and Hanzo share a beer" that got just a hair out of hand.

Hanzo’s standing out on the balcony, tucked in what is starting to become the official smoker’s corner and staring out over the water. Fareeha chews her bottom lip for a moment in indecision, then grabs a second bottle of beer from the refrigerator. The music in here is starting to give her a headache anyway. She pries the lids off with the church key and skirts the group, sparing an indelicate snort at Jesse scream-singing along to the song Lucio is playing. At least he’s drunk because he’s having fun.

She catches the door handle with her elbow and slides the door down its track. Hanzo immediately flicks away his cigarette and turns to face her. Fareeha watches it fall, streaming ash like a tiny, orange comet, and rolls her eyes. Hanzo isn’t fooling anyone; he’s almost as bad as Jesse.

Fareeha holds out the second beer. Hanzo stands a little taller, looking wary. He gets that look a lot, she’s noticed, like he’s waiting for a trap to spring. Paranoid bastard. He reminds her of other people she knows. She shakes the bottle and barely resists making a kissy noise like he’s a stray cat she’s trying to coax into coming closer. He takes it, murmuring a soft _thank you_.

She lifts her bottle to her lips and takes a pull. The beer is mild, reminiscent of Reinhardt’s _helles_ that he swears by as a post-workout ritual.  Hanzo drinks, but doesn’t visibly react to the flavor. She doubts he tasted it at all, given how hard he’s staring at her. She meets his gaze.

She’d thought they were getting past this kind of thing, Hanzo staring at her like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like he’s waiting for her to voice some condemnation or to tell him to leave. He and Jesse have been _whatevering_ for about a year now, if you count all the sneaking around they did at first, and she considers Hanzo a fixture in her life now. An asshole of a fixture, maybe, but a fixture anyway. It’s not like her brother’s not an asshole sometimes himself.

“Not dating him for the singing voice, huh?” she asks. She meant it as a joke, but his lips thin. _Now_ he looks away, gaze flickering briefly to the scene back inside before settling on the dark stretch of pavement below the balcony.  He tips the bottle up and drains half of it. She quirks her eyebrow at that. Now that she thinks about it, he was out here way longer than it takes to smoke one cigarette. He’s hiding or chain smoking, and either way that’s some backsliding bullshit. It’s been months and months since he’d done his ghost in the Watchpoint shtick.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asks, blunt.

Hanzo frowns at her as if he thinks he can intimidate her, but she just crosses her arms. He huffs and digs through his pockets, finding and lighting another cigarette. Fareeha waves away the thin blue smoke, refuses to be chased off. She’s not allergic to tobacco smoke, despite what her mother and brother seem to think.

“Our anniversary is next week,” Hanzo says, finally.

“Congrats. That doesn’t sound like something you mope over.”

Hanzo looks sour, even for him, and he absently ashes his cigarette over the railing.

 “One of how many?”

“How many what?”

“Anniversaries? Years? Days?”

“Slow down, turbo, what’s really going on? Did you two have a fight?”

Hanzo shakes his head, looking affronted. Jesse hasn’t been sulky like he would have been if they were fighting, so that, at least, checks out. Still doesn’t rule out Hanzo having lost it.

“No, there was no argument. It’s simple inevitability,” Hanzo gestures broadly with the bottle. “One day we won’t be in each other’s lives. Death or duty or, or—” Hanzo pauses, wets his lips. “One of us will drift away from the other.”

“You’re too drunk, or I’m not drunk enough,” Fareeha says. “Because right now you sound like an idiot.”

“It is _fact._ ”

“Cool. Still a dumb way to think about it. You love him, he’s _grossly_ in love with you. Don’t over think it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then I’ll _make_ it simple. Jesse’s been happy in a way I haven’t seen in a long, long time. You might be right, shit happens and life is complicated, but if you break his heart because you’re scared of your goddamn imagination, I’m going to kick your ass, Shimada.”

“Oh, would you?” Hanzo says, instinctively rising to the challenge. Still arrogant, even while twisting himself into knots.

“I’ve seen what you ninjas are made of.”

Hanzo scoffs, but he hasn’t really taken offense. He’s gotten better about that, at least. He leans back over the railing, taking an idle sip. It’s Fareeha’s turn to stare at him.

Jesse doesn’t casually use words like _relationship_ or _boyfriend_ or _love_ —saying things like that makes it real, and real things can be lost, can _hurt_ —but she’s heard him use all that and more in the last year. Jesse has had so much less happiness than he deserves, but he’s got some now. She’s willing to help him protect it, however she can. It’s what family does.

“Really though, you are _wasting_ a prime opportunity to gather blackmail material,” she says, hoping to truly lighten the mood.

“You and I both know you can’t blackmail him,” Hanzo laughs.

Fareeha laughs too. She could always piss him off when they were younger, but it was hard to get any of the usual leverage that should rightfully be afforded a younger sibling. He had been _proud_ of that awful goatee from years ago, after all. How do you embarrass a guy like that?

A sudden change in the music rattles the glass door in its frame behind them. Fareeha looks over her shoulder—Jesse is miming playing a guitar, flanked by the younger recruits with their own notional instruments. She feels a sisterly impulse to go back inside to tease him and a warm surge of affection at having him back in her life to tease at all. Half a decade with no news, with no idea how he was doing, no idea if he was even still alive had been awful. Seeing him again on the Watchpoint tarmac, ragged but alive and still himself, was a relief she’d only felt once before.

She knew, had always known, that her brother lived in a different world. One she’d been shielded from before it was closed to her for good. It’s a wonder Jesse can laugh and relax at all; Fareeha will never be able to forget how that kind of living wore away Gabe.

She glances to Hanzo. His lips are quirked up and his eyes crinkled. It’s a fond look, if she’s any judge. They’re made of similar stuff, tempered in shadows and secrets. They can shore each other up in ways people like her just don’t know how. She had misgivings about Hanzo once, but now she hopes they can be there for each other for a long time.

“Look at that. He is _all yours_ ,” Fareeha says, draining her beer. She opens the door, flinching at the volume, and pauses to look over her shoulder. Hanzo pushes himself off the railing and steps to follow her through and rejoin the party.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, feel free to hmu at https://saltytothecore.tumblr.com/


End file.
